ExCobalt: GoRed, the hidden-tunnel technique


While responding to an incident at one of their clients, the PT ESC CSIRT team discovered a previously unknown backdoor written in Go, which they attributed to a cybercrime gang dubbed ExCobalt.

ExCobalt focuses on cyberespionage and includes several members active since at least 2016 and presumably once part of the notorious Cobalt gang. Cobalt attacked financial institutions to steal funds. One of Cobalt’s hallmarks was the use of the CobInt tool, something ExCobalt began to use in 2022. Over the past year, the PT ESC has recorded attacks linked to ExCobalt and investigated related incidents at Russian organizations in the following sectors: Metallurgy, Telecommunications, Mining, Information technology, Government, Software development

Read more…
Source: Positive Technologies


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Hancitor’s Use of Cobalt Strike and a Noisy Network Ping Tool

    April 1, 2021

    Hancitor is an information stealer and malware downloader used by a threat actor designated as MAN1, Moskalvzapoe or TA511. In a threat brief from 2018, we noted Hancitor was relatively unsophisticated, but it would remain a threat for years to come. Approximately three years later, Hancitor remains a threat and has evolved to use tools ...

  • Threat Assessment: Matrix Ransomware

    March 26, 2021

    Matrix is a ransomware family that was first identified publicly in December 2016. Over the years since its inception, it has primarily targeted small- to medium-sized organizations. As of 2019, it had been observed across geographic locations such as the U.S., Belgium, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Canada and the UK. While initially leveraging ...

  • Microsoft Exchange servers now targeted by Black Kingdom ransomware

    March 22, 2021

    Another ransomware operation known as ‘Black Kingdom’ is exploiting the Microsoft Exchange Server ProxyLogon vulnerabilities to encrypt servers. Over the weekend, security researcher Marcus Hutchins, aka MalwareTechBlog, tweeted that a threat actor was compromising Microsoft Exchange servers via the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities to deploy ransomware. Based on the logs from his honeypots, Hutchins states that the threat actor ...

  • Good old malware for the new Apple Silicon platform

    March 12, 2021

    A short while ago, Apple released Mac computers with the new chip called Apple M1. The unexpected release was a milestone in the Apple hardware industry. However, as technology evolves, we also observe a growing interest in the newly released platform from malware adversaries. This inevitably leads us to new malware samples compiled for the ...

  • No Laughing Matter: Joker’s Latest Ploy

    March 12, 2021

    Joker reveals more tricks up its sleeves: new malicious Android apps that, like in past schemes, subscribe users to premium services without their consent. Joker (a.k.a. Bread) is one of the most persistent malware families that continually targets Android devices. The malware entered the scene in 2017, and by early 2020, Google has removed more than ...

  • NimzaLoader malware was written in an unusual programming language to stop it from being detected

    March 11, 2021

    A prolific cyber criminal hacking operation is distributing new malware which is written in a programming language rarely used to compile malicious code. Dubbed NimzaLoader by cybersecurity researchers at Proofpoint, the malware is written in Nim – and it’s thought that those behind the malware have decided to develop it this way in the hopes that ...